Emotet — Office (OLE) / .XLS malware analysis

Static analysis result for SHA-256 32c1f5292e464b50…

MALICIOUS

Office (OLE) / .XLS

73.0 KB Created: 2015-06-05 18:19:34 Authoring application: Microsoft Excel First seen: 2022-05-17
MD5: e2a648a258167ebc9a7bf985a9893a54 SHA-1: a7660e636ad324e29ef5d3b848febc098db5942a SHA-256: 32c1f5292e464b508e925992b2d14536756d52d46a6fdf544b317a5363f7398c
200 Risk Score

Malware Insights

Emotet · confidence 95%

MITRE ATT&CK
T1059.005 Visual Basic T1204.002 Malicious File

The file is an Excel 4.0 macro-enabled spreadsheet. Heuristics indicate the presence of an Auto_Open macro that uses dangerous functions, specifically the RUN function. The macro constructs a path to %System32% and concatenates several URLs, one of which is reconstructed as 'http://anguianoss.com/wp-admin/BLMH9Q3bG/'. This indicates the macro is designed to download and execute a second-stage payload from one of the provided URLs.

Heuristics 4

  • Excel 4.0 Auto_Open defined name critical OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN_DEFINEDNAME
    oletools recovered an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry from an Excel 4.0 macro sheet. The raw BIFF name can be tokenized or partially opaque to byte-string checks, but the recovered macro listing confirms the workbook has an XLM auto-execution entry.
  • XLM Auto_Open with dangerous formula APIs critical OLE_XLM_DANGEROUS_FN
    Excel 4.0 macro sheet contains an Auto_Open / Auto_Close entry and dangerous XLM formula APIs that can invoke programs, write files, or transfer control without VBA.
  • ClamAV: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0 critical CLAMAV_DETECTION
    ClamAV detected this file as malware: Xls.Downloader.Emotet-ea85857e7e81817a-9950241-0
  • Excel 4.0 (XLM) macro sheet present medium OLE_XLM_AUTOOPEN
    Workbook contains an Excel 4.0 macro sheet sub-stream — XLM is rarely seen in modern legitimate workbooks and was a major Office malware vector during 2020-2022.

Extracted artifacts 1

Files carved from inside the sample during analysis.

FilenameKindSourceSize
xlm_macros.txt
9aad8521d90ca7f536d86e805137dbff97d82a2ac842ee968dd491451c1e0d83		 xlm-macro oletools.olevba.extract_all_macros (XLM macro listing) 6831 bytes

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